Thanksgiving Day

Don't you just love a bargain? I just got back from what I hope is my last pilgrimage to the grocery store for the things I forgot to get over the last three trips. These flowers were marked down to 2$ and were about to be tossed in the trash! I passed on the 3$ peach colored roses. So there's a 22 pound turkey bathing in the kitchen sink that still has some ice crystals up where the giblets are stuffed and I'm blogging. It doesn't have to go into the oven until 1:30 (thanks for the calculations, Poppy) because Jimmy won't be landing at Hartsfield until 5:30 if all goes as planned. These two little pieces were made for an invitational art auction and have to get in a priority mail box tomorrow to reach their destination in time. "The Egyptian Room" was inspired by the film "A Night at the Museum" which I finally saw last week. Both pieces are fabric collaged onto 5"x7"canvases with acrylic medium.

Home Towns

Take a look at this list. Do you recognize your home town? (If you do, send me an email and say "Howdy") This is a very partial list of locations for people who have had the interest to stop by my blog or website for a few minutes and look at my work and read about my life. It just staggers me with hope and gratitude that so many people all over this planet can care about something as fleeting and inconsequential as the art-making of a middle aged lady in Old Dixie, America. It reminds me that all over this world, in hometowns everywhere, we all have the same big concerns about family, hopes for the future and desire for life on this fragile planet. We all breathe the air and drink the water. I give thanks.

Self-indulgence

These crocheted cotton mittens took one documentary on Stanley Kubrick, one of his early films "Paths to Glory" and "Shakespeare in Love" to complete. Not a bad way to spend a slow Sunday afternoon. I don't really know how to crochet beyond this one stitch so I just build with this one stitch right on my hand. I was happy they both turned out the same and can't wait for a frosty morning to try them out.

More new stuff and miscellany

Pamela's talk about non-representational work and the mere mention of Mark Rothko has caused me to drag out pieces of hand-dyed damask and hand painted cottons that I could never bring myself to cut into and use them in a large way. I recently came into a few acres of a really intense, black polyester blend that has found new life as base and backing fabric. Just gonna stare at it awhile and try to see how the stitching will help or hurt it. I'm having second thought about the center element. It's starting to look like a skirt.

This is me going away with Voodoo and Jinx who are not quite aware that the other is there or mayhem might have ensued.

And this is my little pagan family protection nest.

WWU3 or maybe not

#3 is in the early stages. I resisted coming out of the blue palette but Jim insisted and he was right, but I'm not happy with some of the shapes so after the "brutal wash" there will be some hacking. The mauve/gold/white pieces of fabric are a kind of cotton that you can no longer buy and take the dye in wonderful, fine grained marbled way that I could never reproduce in any other cloth. This was originally a sheet from my Aunt Jo & Uncle Chuck Morley's hunting lodge in Flint, Michigan so it is easily fifty years old. Two summers past, it became too fragile to continue as my favorite bedding so into the dyepot it went. I've been hoarding it ever since. The cut work came from an estate sale in Narragansett, RI.